Shades of last year, yet again.....

Andrew Ross Sorkin, in today's Times: Stress Tests? No Big Deal After All

....here’s the rub: If some banks can’t pass this test — which William Black, a former senior bank regulator during the S.& L. crisis, has called “a complete sham” and others have suggested is a whitewash — perhaps we have a larger problem.

Maybe this test is going to show more failures than we thought.

Any banks that actually might “fail” the test, and I put those words in quote marks for a reason, will be given six months to raise new capital on their own or accept capital from the government.

But what private investor is going to invest in any of the failing banks, knowing full well that the government may end up coming in later on and diluting the investor’s stake?

This may end feeling a little bit like a replay of the government’s intervention in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You’ll recall that Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary, received temporary powers from Congress to take over Fannie and Freddie. At the time, he said he didn’t plan to use those powers, just the threat of them.

Really - this is getting eerie.....

Why oh why can't Team Obama simply get it over with? Yes, it'll be costly both politically and financially, but we keep fiddling while Rome burns, and zombie banks get increasingly desperate to appear alive (remember all those Q1 earnings fantasies?...)

On second thought, this is increasingly also looking like Japan in the 1990's.